Julienne Gage

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What Entrepreneurs Can't Fix

The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class—and What We Can Do About It, by Richard Florida. Basic Books

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, Richard Florida argued in The Rise of the Creative Class that cities fostering brainy interaction, creativity, and innovation would thrive, since modern capitalism was increasingly knowledge-based. His projections were acclaimed by artsy, back-to-the-city types (including many church planters) and scorned by activists and the low-income residents that gentrification displaced.

The critics were on to something, because since then many big cities have indeed gotten sexier, but not necessarily more reliable, especially for the masses. From 2006 to 2014, average incomes declined by 6 percent, while average rent prices soared by 22 percent. Today, about 21 million American renters are putting 30 to 50 percent of their income toward rent, with 30 percent representing the “cost-burdened” threshold.

How to Start Your Own Feminist Fight Club

According to author Jessica Bennett, just ask WWJD--What Would Josh Do?

WHEN AWARD_WINNING journalist Jessica Bennett published her saucy Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual (For a Sexist Workplace) in September 2016, it seemed reasonable to suggest “recognizing sexism is harder than it once was.”

That was before then-presidential candidate Donald Trump claimed in one debate that his rival Hillary Clinton didn’t have the presidential “look” and called her a “nasty woman” in another, and before the leak of a 2005 tape in which Trump boasted of grabbing women’s genitals, which he defended as “locker room talk.”

But blatant sexism doesn’t cancel out the less-obvious forms. Bennett addresses a variety of modern workplace scenarios—from fighting to get a word in edgewise and negotiating equal pay and maternity leave to naming and confronting sexual harassment—with statistical evidence and creative strategies. The latter run from the subtle yet assertive “I have another idea to throw out” in response to male dismissal or interruption to the more overt “Are you her tampon?” when a man asks if a co-worker is on her period.

Like many Gen-Xers who came of age after the feminist revolution, Bennett’s awakening was gradual. She started her career as a Newsweek reporter in 2005. Until she got there, she knew nothing of the 46 female Newsweek employees who, decades earlier, successfully sued over gender discrimination when they found they had been hired as researchers for male reporters on grounds that “women don’t write.”

Gangland

Mano Dura: The Politics of Gang Control in El Salvador, by Sonja Wolf. University of Texas Press.

THE MERE MENTION of maras—gangs that formed in the U.S. and then spread throughout Central America—conjures up overcrowded prisons filled with ominous-looking, elaborately tattooed Central American youth flashing gang signs. While this reality does exist, it’s part of what German scholar Sonja Wolf calls a folkloric attempt to demonize disenfranchised sectors of society rather than invest in comprehensive social programs.

Her new academic book, Mano Dura: The Politics of Gang Control in El Salvador, offers a far deeper analysis of public policy. It’s a must-read for any aid worker or missionary hoping to build peace and prosperity in a country with one of the highest homicide rates in the world—81 homicides per 100,000 people, eight times the U.N.’s marker for an epidemic. It also raises important questions about how much violence can actually be attributed to gangs when crime data is patchy and politicized.

The book, an updated version of Wolf’s 2008 doctoral dissertation in international politics, examines two decades of attempts to “pacify” El Salvador’s gangs, a subculture that diversified and expanded after El Salvador’s 1992 U.N.-sponsored peace accords. During the 12 years prior, a civil war claimed some 75,000 lives and prompted 1 million Salvadorans to seek refuge in the U.S. Some of these young refugees joined large U.S. gangs such as 18th Street or created their own, such as MS-13, then brought their gang affiliation back to El Salvador during mass deportations in the early 1990s.

Making Peace in a Powder Keg

Kenya is home to 70 languages, 42 ethnic groups, and at least one terrorist organization. Young peace activists are bridging these differences, one issue at a time.

The Amala Foundation

IN DECEMBER 2007, Naomi Mwangi, a Christian, fled her home in Kisumu, Kenya, as men with machetes attacked towns across the region. For five weeks violence raged nationwide. When the bloodshed ended, more than 1,300 Kenyans were dead and another 650,000 had been displaced. Mwangi and her family ended up living in the Maai Mahiu refugee camp, south of Nairobi. She was 12 years old.

Mwangi is coming of age in a society with ethnic violence in the background, extremist violence in the foreground, and massive economic inequality. Africa has the highest concentration of young people in the world and more than half of them are unemployed. Mwangi wanted something different—she wanted to work for peace.

Now 21, Mwangi is a leader in grassroots peacemaking campaigns that seek to end conflicts between the 42 ethnic groups in this majority-Christian country. The 2007 election violence pitted Christian against Christian, as ethnic ties trumped religious affiliation. Even now, during elections, Mwangi told Sojourners, “Leaders motivate youth to join in the political crisis ... to fight against another tribe.”

A major obstacle to social and economic stability among youth in Kenya is unequal distribution of government-issued identification cards. Kenyans need ID cards for everything from voting and university enrollment to obtaining grants for entrepreneurship programs. But historically, the ruling government doled them out as political favors, and they’ve often been denied to members of minority groups.

“There are plenty of applications at election time,” Mwangi said, explaining that the ID process is slowed down or delayed when it seems one ethnic group could tip the chances of a politician who represents a different group.